


A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two That Don't Know How To Forge Documents

by Desdemon



Category: Psych
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-28
Updated: 2007-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdemon/pseuds/Desdemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shawn spends an entire day equivocating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two That Don't Know How To Forge Documents

Shawn was working on a killer angle with Miranda Philips when Lassiter chose just that moment to stride in and ruin everything.

He walked up to their table while Shawn was still in the middle of his sentence ("Not that you'll see my name in the liner notes - I don't feel that burning need for fame that the others do - but they know, and I know, that I was the sixth member of Boyz 2 Men") and grabbed Shawn's arm without so much as a hello.

"Out. Now," Lassiter said, and jerked Shawn's arm a little to emphasize the command.

Shawn ducked his head apologetically at Miranda. "Ex-boyfriend. He's a bit of a control freak, but we're working on it."

Lassiter practically yanked his arm out of its socket trying to get him away from the table before he finished that sentence, but Shawn had learned from years of best-friendship with Gus the many ways to wiggle out of a stronghold. Damage done, he allowed Lassiter to drag him into the back hallway with the pay phone and the restrooms.

"Dude," he said, whispering because he thought that Lassiter probably thought that this was a situation for whispering, "you totally hacked my game just then. Miranda is a huge music fan."

"Shut up," Lassiter said and got _real_ close, 'I am intimidating' close. Shawn leaned away. "Explain to me exactly how you felt that you were in any way, shape, or form permitted by some quirk of the law to forge my signature on that warrant request and then present it to it my chief as if you were operating under my instructions."

"Interim chief," Shawn reminded him. "And I didn't forge it in the sense that if you had known why I wanted the warrant, you would have wanted one, too, and then _you_ would have signed it. I just... skipped all those steps in the middle," Shawn said, waving the steps away with his hand.

"All the steps that involved going through legal channels to obtain a warrant, you mean," Lassiter said, practically through his teeth. "All the steps that involved informing me about your intentions, your suspicions, your information -"

"Whoa, whoa," Shawn said, putting his hands on Lassiter's shoulders. "Calm down. I did you a really big favor. Without that warrant you never would have been able to search Bob Hannigan's office for those incriminating documents, which would have been gone in the morning, which is when he was intending to torch the place. Now," Shawn said enthusiastically, clapping Lassiter's shoulders once, "you've got the guy! No torching involved!"

Lassiter shoved Shawn away, which was actually a little more violence than Shawn had expected just then. The guy was apparently seriously angry about this. So, okay. Shawn could handle that. He held up his hands in quick apology. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry I forged your signature. I'm sorry I solved your case, in a way -" he added loudly, because Lassiter's face clouded up like an impending storm of doom and pissiness, "that I had not cleared with you first. It was your case," he said, admitting the point like the bigger person that he was right now. "And," he probably needed to add, "your signature."

"Don't think you can get away with this just by apologizing," Lassiter said, pointing a finger in Shawn's face.

Shawn blinked. "What else do you want me to do? If you tell the chief what happened, it'll render the arrest illegal. Hannigan will get away free as a bird. A document-forging, embezzling bird of some kind. A very bad bird."

"I know that," Lassiter hissed through a tightly clenched jaw, which, seriously, did not look healthy. If he kept this up, there could be medical consequences. "I'll stand by the arrest, despite what your little stunt could have cost me and this department. But I," he said, stepping close again, doing that thing - Shawn's neck cricked with the strain of leaning away - "will be watching you."

"Okay," Shawn said, hoping he wouldn't fall over backwards. "Got it. Message: totally received. I'm on Lassy probation."

Lassiter's eyes flashed, and for a second Shawn thought that he was going to get even closer, at which point Shawn definitely would have fallen over, so he was was relieved when Lassiter just snapped his mouth shut and backed away. Shawn would have thanked him or something, but he was distracted by worrying over the crick in his neck. He would have to ask Gus to give him a massage later. Not that Gus would give him one, but it would be funny to see his face when Shawn asked.

"Spencer," Lassiter said, and Shawn was attentive again, eyebrows raised. "I put up with a lot from you." Shawn could not disagree. "But there are some lines that I cannot allow you to cross, and one of them is my reputation on the force." He opened his mouth to continue and then shut it and exhaled through his nose very suddenly, as if he couldn't think what to say. "The police department is not your personal playground, Spencer, and I don't know why, exactly, we - why _I_ continue to allow you to act as if it is."

"I'm just too cute to say no to?" Shawn suggested.

Lassiter's mouth thinned to an ugly line. "You're on borrowed time, as far as I'm concerned," he said flatly. "Thin ice. Eggshells."

"I walk the line," Shawn concluded humbly. "I understand."

"No, I don't think you - never mind," Lassiter said, closing his eyes momentarily and holding out a hand to stop himself. "You know what? Never mind. I don't have to explain this to you." He opened his eyes and smiled at Shawn, and oh, it was a vicious thing. Shawn felt shivers. "I just have to wait until you take it too far, and bring yourself down."

Lassiter had probably intended that to be his dramatic exit, but he took the wrong turn out of the hallway. Shawn waited until he realized that he was in the kitchens, and came back pointing the other way grimly. Shawn jerked a thumb in the correct direction to help him out, smiled, waved, and when he was out of sight, exhaled slowly and heavily. Say what you would about Lassiter, dude was intense. In kind of a sad way.

With that thought, Shawn collected himself and prepared to tell Miranda a long and tragic story about why Lassiter had interrupted them that would make Shawn seem extremely cool and also not gay. Sometimes, he often told Gus with high-minded self-pity, his gift with one-liners was more of a curse.

"The only curse you have is being too stupid to know the difference between just playing around and actually getting yourself into serious trouble," Gus snapped when Shawn told him that again, the next day, while relating the story of Lassiter's warning.

"Gus, I do what I have to do to make sure that the forces of evil don't win the day," Shawn protested. "Deep down, I know Lassiter knows that."

"Deep down, Lassiter has a desire to kick you in the ribs many times," Gus countered. "I know what it's like."

"Come on, Gus," Shawn said, leaning back in his excitingly ergonomic new desk chair that Gus had unwittingly bought for him on eBay that time he had forgotten to log out of Shawn's computer. "You're not actually mad at me."

"I am mad at you, Shawn," Gus disagreed, with that slightly crazy look he got in his eye whenever he was so frustrated that it morphed into a peaceful feeling. Shawn knew it well. "You tampered with police documents. You could have gotten us both arrested. Both of us could have lost both our jobs."

"I only have one job, Gus," Shawn corrected him.

"And it's a good thing," Gus said, still with that crazy smile. "Because if you had two jobs, like I do, the chance percentage of you doing something dumb enough to get your ass fired would go up to one hundred percent."

"Did you just say 'chance percentage' to me?" Shawn inquired. "No more horse-racing on television for you."

"Shawn, you only bought four cable channels on this television, and one of them was ESPN2. What do you expect me to do?" Gus demanded, gesturing sharply at the television in the corner of the office.

"Not watch horse-racing," Shawn said, blinking at the obviousness of the question.

Gus pointed at him. "You screwed this up, Shawn. I am disappointed." He turned around and went for his jacket.

"Oh, come on!" Shawn said loudly. "Nothing happened! Everybody's fine! Except the bad guy, whom I _caught_ ," Shawn added.

Gus put his jacket on and got his briefcase from the couch. He started to move out of the room.

"Gus!" Shawn said in his pouty voice. "Gus, don't be like this! Gus, I won't do it again!"

"Yeah, right, Shawn," came Gus's voice from the other room, and then he heard the tinkle of the bell as their door closed.

"Oh my God, why does everybody _hate_ me today?" Shawn asked the air.

"Oh, I don't know, Shawn, maybe because you put our case and Lassiter's job in danger yesterday based on a psychic hunch?" Juliet said when he asked her later that day at the precinct. She hadn't stopped walking, even when he'd told her how pretty her hair looked today, so Shawn was sort of skipping to keep up with her while also looking in every direction to make sure that Lassiter wasn't around.

"Juliet, my powers are very real, and, more importantly, I was totally right," Shawn told her, dodging a civilian aide with an armful of paperwork.

"Yes, you were right, Shawn. You solved the case. Hey, you know, I do that sometimes, and I have never yet found it necessary to forge documents," Juliet said, somewhat sarcastically, Shawn thought. "What do you want from me, Shawn? An apology? Yeah, you did something good, but you also did something pretty bad." She glanced at him. "Look, you shouldn't even be here. Lassiter saw me talking to you yesterday and he wouldn't speak to me for the rest of our shift."

"What is he, like, five years old?" Shawn asked. "You didn't know about the warrant thing any more than he did."

"Yeah, I think he thinks I'm sort of in league with you," Juliet said, off-handedly like she didn't mind, but Shawn could tell she kind of did.

"That's ridiculous," Shawn said, indignant on her behalf. "If anything, I'm in league with you. And him," he insisted at Juliet's look. "We're all in league together, like a team kind of thing. I'm on your side. Does nobody see that I'm just trying to catch bad guys here?"

Juliet finally stopped walking, but only because they were around the corner from her desk. "Shawn," she said, with a knowing look, and for the first time Shawn let himself be a little ashamed. "Like I said," she told him, and if her tone wasn't forgiving, at least her face was. "You did something good, and you did something bad." She cocked her head towards the front doors, and she smiled just a little. "Now get out of here before Lassiter sees you."

Lassiter did see him, but only later, and only because Shawn was following him in Gus's car. Shawn knew the jig was up when Lassiter pulled over next to a Thai restaurant. Lassiter hated Thai.

"What are you doing here, Spencer?" Lassiter asked through the passenger-side window after Shawn rolled it down.

"Nothing," Shawn said. "Following you."

"You've got three seconds to tell me why, and then I'm arresting you," Lassiter said.

"I just wanted to apologize and I couldn't go to the station because you'd be mean to Juliet if you saw me there," Shawn said in a rush. Then he took a deep breath, and let it out in a whoosh.

"You already apologized," Lassiter said, with his stone face on.

"Yeah, but this time I mean it," Shawn said, and he hoped that Lassiter could see that he wasn't joking.

For a moment, Shawn wasn't sure. But then Lassiter reached his hand inside the car and pulled up the lock. He opened the door, sat in the passenger's seat, and turned part of the way to face Shawn. "Okay," he said. "I'm listening."

Shawn took another breath. "I had no right to forge your signature," he said. "I know what your job means to you, and by doing what I did, I... didn't respect that." Shawn groped for the words, even though he'd been thinking about this ever since he talked to Juliet. "And I don't want you to think that that means I don't respect _you._ Because I do. I really respect you. Don't laugh," he said preemptively.

"I'm not," Lassiter said, and Shawn's stomach did a weird little thing.

"I respect you," Shawn continued, trying to remember his place, "and your job, and how you feel about... your job... I'm just really sorry," he said, giving up.

Lassiter looked at Shawn for a long moment, and then he nodded. "I accept your apology," he said.

"Really?" Shawn asked, straightening in his seat. "You do?"

"Yep," Lassiter said. "Don't ever follow me again."

"No, yeah, okay," Shawn said. "I won't."

Lassiter nodded again. "Okay," he said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Shawn said, and he thought he was probably grinning, but hey, he was excited. That might have been a moment just then. "Okay," he said as Lassiter got out of the car. "Goodnight," he called through the open window. He couldn't quite see, but he thought Lassiter rolled his eyes as he walked back to his own car, and he felt a little giddy. It was _totally_ a moment. He resisted the urge to hit the steering wheel triumphantly - the last time had resulted in some unfortunate miscommunication in a parking lot between himself and some other drivers - Gus had barely escaped with his life - and instead limited himself to bouncing in his seat for a second or two before restarting the ignition. He waited until Lassiter's taillights faded away for the victory dance.


End file.
